TOA Technologies: Collaborative growth

1. TOA Technologies

You’ve probably experienced the frustration firsthand of waiting around for hours wondering when the cable guy or repair worker is going to arrive at your house, and it’s something that Yuval Brisker and Irad Carmi are on a mission to stop.

Brisker is co-founder, co-president and CEO and Carmi is co-founder, co-president and chief technology officer of TOA Technologies Inc., a company that provides mobile work force management software and is trying to eradicate long customer wait times from industries that go to customers’ homes on an appointment basis.

“The key customer service problem is the reason the company has grown so dramatically over the past years,” Brisker says. “Really just solving a mundane and day-to-day problem is enough to give you that wind beneath your wings, but you have to do it in a sophisticated and effective way and deliver until those are done, which has helped us grow.”

The key to doing this in that sophisticated manner is to work with customers to solve problems instead of assuming they know how to solve them by themselves. Brisker and Carmi reached out to their customers and presented their ideas and their projected solutions and worked with the customers to solve the problems based on their original ideas and the customers’ feedback.

“We didn’t actually go out and develop a full-scale solution before we understood from the customers what would work for them and what would not work for them,” Brisker says. “Working with our customers hand in hand in a collaborative environment has been a key to our success.”

Taking this approach has built a strong rapport with customers, too, as TOA is seen as a partner instead of just a business trying to sell them a product.

“Develop and maintain a close, personal, committed relationship with the people you intend to sell to,” Brisker says. “Whether they’re a consumer or an enterprise, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you understand truly, deeply, what the customers’ needs are and then go out and work with them to develop and deliver a solution and a product.”

How to reach: TOA Technologies Inc., (216) 360-8106 or www.toatech.com

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